The DAY function in Excel is a useful tool for extracting the day of the month from a given date. It is often used in conjunction with other functions, such as MONTH and YEAR, to extract the various components of a date and perform calculations or analysis.
To use the DAY function, you simply enter the date you want to extract the day from in the function’s argument. For example, if you want to extract the day of the month from the date “1/1/2020,” you would enter “=DAY(1/1/2020)” into a cell. The function will then return the value “1,” indicating that the date of “1/1/2020” is the first day of the month.
There are a few things to keep in mind when using the DAY function. First, the function will only work with valid dates. If you try to use the function with a date that does not exist, such as “2/29/2021” (which is not a leap year), the function will return an error. Additionally, the function will only work with dates that are entered as either a serial number or a text string in the format “mm/dd/yyyy.” If you enter a date in any other format, the function will not work correctly.
One of the primary uses of the DAY function is to extract the day of the month from a date and use it in calculations. For example, you might want to calculate how many days are left in a month, or determine the number of days between two dates. To do this, you can use the DAY function in combination with other functions, such as MONTH and YEAR.
For example, let’s say you want to calculate how many days are left in the month of January. You could use the following formula: “=31-DAY(1/1/2020),” which would return the value “30,” indicating that there are 30 days left in the month of January. You could also use the formula “=EOMONTH(1/1/2020,0)-DAY(1/1/2020),” which would return the same result. The EOMONTH function returns the last day of the month, and the “0” in the formula indicates that you want the result for the current month.
Another common use of the DAY function is to determine the number of days between two dates. For example, you might want to know how many days have passed since a particular event. To do this, you can use the following formula: “=B3-A3,” where A3 and B3 are the cells containing the two dates you want to compare. The formula will return the number of days between the two dates.
There are also a few other things you can do with the DAY function. For example, you can use it to extract the day of the week from a date. To do this, you can use the formula “=WEEKDAY(A3),” where A3 is the cell containing the date you want to extract the day of the week from. The formula will return a number from 1 to 7, with 1 representing Sunday and 7 representing Saturday. You can then use the TEXT function to convert the number to a day of the week.